complete css layout

I have the following very rudimentary design, but I have no idea how to do it.
It needs to be 900px wide and preferably centred in the middle of the screen. Also, Unfortunately I am designing this for IE7 upwards, so it needs to look good in these browsers.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|      LOGO          |                          |      Register for Professionals Forum |
|                    |                          |                                       |

Hello all:

I'm doing site maintenance on a layout that uses absolute positioning to solve some issues, but naturally the positioning causes its own problems.

>> Link to image of the layout

Text in the "special messaging" container overflows of course and then passes over the Flash banner area. I would like to get rid of the absolute positioning entirely, so I was wondering how others might approach this layout style.

Hello guys,

I just finished a website layout in an image editor. I've been reading a couple of tutorials on CSS but I'm still having trouble positioning div's exactly where I want. Any advice on how can I do something like this?

Any comments are highly appreciated!

I found your website yesterday. Great, great resource! Please keep going!

I have developed a proof of concept web application that my contract owner would like to go live with. I have developed it with xhtml (strict) with jQuery middle ware and a bunch of static xml (2D/flat database) as a 'back-end'.

Finally most of the coding is completed on my latest redesign, please check out http://www.puredezigner.com/clients/2010/. I look forward to your feedback.

Thanks